Marketing & Branding
Strategists and creatives who help organisations build brands that resonate, differentiate and endure
Robert Cialdini is a social psychologist and author who helps organisations understand the science of influence and persuasion in business, leadership, and decision-making contexts.
The 50+ consumer controls a disproportionate share of discretionary spending in most developed markets. Brands still design products and craft messaging as if youth is where growth lives. Entire segments worth trillions are treated as demographic footnotes, served by assumptions about ageing that are fifteen years out of date.
Running a legacy consumer brand through a platform shift is a test of nerve, not only strategy. The leaders who hold a brand’s authority while rebuilding its audience are making uncomfortable calls on talent, product and tone, usually with less budget and a shrinking category. Few have done it across three titles and then walked into the platform replacing them.
Most leadership messages get heard, then forgotten by the next meeting. Strategy decks, town halls, brand campaigns and customer pitches compete for attention against everything else employees and buyers see in a day. The discipline of building a story that an audience can repeat, and wants to repeat, is rarely treated as a serious business skill, even as it decides whether a strategy lands or stalls.
Dame Heather Rabbatts DBE is a barrister and senior board leader who advises organisations on governance, leadership, inclusion, and responsible oversight across public, media, sport, and creative sectors.
Most sales organisations still treat brand, content, and pipeline as separate functions managed by separate teams. The result is paid acquisition that gets more expensive every quarter and a sales force that depends on it. The harder question is what a commercial operating model looks like when the content engine is the lead engine.
Consumers no longer respond to messages aimed at demographic segments. They respond to cultural meaning, and most marketing teams are not built to read or shape it. The result is brands that spend heavily on attention but cannot account for why some products spread, why some movements stick, and why most fail to do either.
Most commercial teams are not losing to better products. They are losing to better sellers, and to rivals who have learned to build a personal brand that opens doors before a pitch begins. Leaders want their salespeople, founders, and client-facing executives to act like owners of the relationship, not order-takers, yet sales culture in most organisations still rewards process over presence. The problem is not motivation. It is a missing operating model for how individuals actually win trust, attention, and the close in markets where every competitor looks credible on paper.
Consumer trust is not declining because products are worse. Organisations are deploying AI and persuasive technology faster than they understand its effect on human behaviour. The commercial cost shows up as rising disengagement, eroding brand loyalty and deepening consumer scepticism.
Most corporate events pour budget into content and underinvest in the person holding it together. One flat panel, one fumbled live moment, and the energy of a room drains away. For international organisations the problem compounds, because broadcast-grade moderation across multiple languages is far harder to source than most planners assume.
Sue Garrard is a sustainability strategy advisor and former Unilever Executive Vice President who helps organisations embed sustainability into business strategy and performance.